Hey everybody! Well, another couple of weeks has come and gone in the soon-to-be frozen North. I don't have a whole lot to share with y'all tonight, but I will share it none the less.

"STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS"

Isaac Newton, the 17th Century mathematician and natural philosopher (which I consider to be a much more apt name for the physical sciences) once said that "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." referring to the terrific advances in physics that he made.

The "giants" he mentions are the likes of Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo, who were all standing on the shoulders of the likes of Copernicus. It is this intricate, yet pretty much reliable pyramid of predecessing giants that makes science so neat, and makes scientific history so amazing...at least to me. Well, you may think that I am off on yet another scientific rant, but you would be wrong. This essay is about advertising...yup, advertising.

If you were wanting to start a company, any company, what would you name it? Well, something descriptive of what your company was about would be good, like Creative Trains (Shameless promotion for Creative Trains at the Mall of America
or www.creativetrains.com for all of your Holiday shopping needs!) You could, of course, go a different direction.

Find something in your city that is beloved, or well known, and just throw the name of it in front of your product. Walking to the bus stop every morning, I have opportunities to observe things, like the names of fence companies. In the 6 blocks between my door and the bus stop, there are yards with fences from 3 separate Fairbanks companies...Denali Fencing, McKinley Fence, and McKinley Gate Co. All three use "The Great One", aka Mt. McKinley, aka Denali as their namesake, and why not? It is a thing that folks identify with up here.

I did a quick check in the business listings of the phone book and checked to see how many companies were named either Denali or McKinley, and well, needless to say, there are quite a few. The other popular ones are Aurora and "Farthest
North".

This is nothing new. Back home, it is Husker this and Husker that.

My question is, why is this so popular? Does aligning yourself with a sports team or a mountain make business better? I suppose it may, but I don't know that it works so well in all cases.

For example, I was listening to a Husker football game last autumn and an advertisement came on for something, I don't even know, but they started off with "Just like the Huskers, so-and-so insurance company knows how to beat the competition..." and on and on. The link between a decent football team and an insurance company is shaky, at best. And it could be downright advertising suicide for some companies.

For example, the fictitious company of Great Plains Proctology Clinic in Lincoln. Suppose that they advertise on the Husker radio network, and they have a little spiel about how "Just like the Huskers, Great Plains Proctology knows how to bowl through the opposing force and put themselves at the head of the pack!" Now, I don't mean to be crude, but is an image of 300+ lb men in pads and helmets crashing into each other REALLY what you want to be thinking about when you are, shall we say, in the middle of THAT sort of a medical examination?

I think that finesse and comfort are more of what you would want to convey in that line of work, not brute strength. So, when you come up with that failsafe business plan, and you are looking to stand on the shoulders of some giants to put yourself on the map, be careful what message you are sending...

GOINGS ON

The Drum Corps International World Finals were held on Aug 11, and so ends yet another drum corps season. My dear friend Kristen Clark aged out of Bluecoats, which brings to an end the careers of all of the people that I still know who were marching. The Cavaliers from Rosemont, IL won their 4th World Title in a somewhat convincing fashion (though not everybody agreed...what else is new?) and the Blue Devils from Concord, CA and the Cadets from Bergen, NJ tied for second. The Bluecoats ended up in 8th place.

We had an honest to goodness thundershower here today, which corresponded nicely with our "heat wave". It got up to 77 today. That is just 5 degrees below the highest temp of the summer. And just in case you were wondering, yes, I can hear
everybody who is reading this from the midwest seething with hatred at these words. Worry not, my day will come.

More and more, the fireweed is blooming at the top, which is a daunting sign, indeed. The fireweed is a weed (aptly named) which has small red flowers which bloom from the bottom of the stalk to the top of the stalk. When the flowers bloom at the top of the stalk, the first frost is no more than 6 weeks away...how comforting. Now you know why the high school football season ends in by the end of September up here...

I will finish it out with a bit of...

INJECTIONS D'HUMEUR

Why do chicken coops have 2 doors? Because if they had 4 doors, they would be chicken sedans.

FINALLY...

Well, I am pleased to announce that the new, and hopefully improved version of Brian Hartmann Online is now up and running. You can find it here:
http://www.qsl.net/kc0hoj/bmh/home.html

Later,

Brian "Just like the Huskers..." Hartmann